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“Lyrics Videos” On YouTube & English Language Learners

An article in today’s New York Times titled On YouTube, ‘Lyrics Videos’ Mark a New Genre highlights an excellent resource for English Language Learners and their teachers — creative music videos that emphasize displaying the lyrics as they are sung. Of course, there are many karaoke sites that ELL teachers use, as well as other tools specifically designed for ELLs (you can see lots of them at The Best Music Websites For Learning English) but, apparently, releasing videos that are more than just the lyrics scrolling down the screen is becoming a genre of its own. And that’s good news for ELL classrooms — not only does it mean that up-to-date songs will have their lyrics displayed, but that they will also show a little creativity to make it more interesting to students.

Also, one piece of new information for me was that if you searched “lyrics video” on YouTube, you’ll find a greater number of these than if you use some of the search terms I’ve been using to find them.

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2 Comments

This seems like a very interesting thing to use in class (lyric videos), I’m just wondering how one would incorporate them into a lesson. Is there a specific type of lesson or skill/subskill that you would primarily use them for?

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